Slowdanger delivers interactive virtual dance experience in ‘remote possibilities’
Slowdanger’s Anna Thompson and Taylor Knight are no strangers to pushing the boundaries of how audiences see, hear and even feel dance. In 2019, they partnered with Robert Zacharias, a special faculty lecturer in Carnegie Mellon University’s IDeATe program, to create a multisensory dance experience at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland. With a stripped-down speaker, some sensors and a wire, they concocted a way for dancers’ movements to translate into vibrations that museum-goers could
feel while they watched.
They wanted to keep the project going until COVID-19 had other plans.
“We haven’t really been able to work on that project because it requires physical touch, and that’s something we have way less of now,” Thompson said.
The pandemic prompted slowdanger to adapt the concept for the computer. This
month, “remote possibilities” premiered online, with performance opportunities running through March 27 as part of slowdanger’s digital season. Instead of sitting back and watching, small-sized audiences will be invited to interact with their screens to help shape traits of the show.
“We wanted to find a way to use those [online] platforms to make an experience that would allow the participant to perhaps feel embodied in themselves and engaged in the experience,” Knight said.
To make that happen, they reunited with Zacharias — joined this time by software developer Kevin DeLand — to build their own interactive online platform. Audience members will engage with different filters on their screens and through their web cameras to make things happen.
“When you’re closer up [to the screen] a sound might be more audible,” Thompson explained. “When you’re further back, it might add in another audio filter.”
Their idea for these interactive filters came from thinking about people’s personal “masks” — or the body language they choose when communicating on a video conference call on a platform like Zoom.
“How do we present ourselves? And how much more work do we have to do in a telespace like Zoom, where you’re kind of having to to read others’ subtle body cues — as well as perform your own?” Thompson said.
Audience interactions will then open up a portal to an online performance by a member of slowdanger. Creating movement that will be seen on a computer screen has its challenges.
“This whole live performance is only danced from basically the rib cage and up,” Thompson said.
Because of these space restrictions,
much of the movement is influenced by corporeal mime technique, which they studied with celebrated movement actor Mark Conway Thompson early in their careers.
“We’re trying to blend that with our training in contemporary and modern dance,” Knight said, “as well as to our theatrical training.”
The creative process also got them thinking about the life inside a theater — where do those moments of magic between artists and audiences go when theaters are empty? Some of those curiosities and references are sprinkled throughout “remote possibilities,” too.
“We sourced a lot of Shakespeare sonnets and reinterpreted them for the digital world, specifically about how all the world’s a stage and the many roles that we play,” Thompson said. “It’s this idea about how we perform our lives, and how we perform our lives online right now.”
Audiences for each performance are small — fewer than 10 people per show — as to not overwhelm the technology they’re using. But they also hope the intimate number of participants makes for a more engaged viewer experience.
“Zoom burnout is real. It’s easy to put it on and just do things in the background,” Knight said. “We wanted this to be honed in because there is so much that’s required of the participant to engage. We hope folks will really dedicate that moment and that time to experience the project.”